


Runaway

by ImhereImQuire



Category: Vampire Chronicles - Anne Rice
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-12
Updated: 2013-01-12
Packaged: 2017-11-25 05:21:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/635535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImhereImQuire/pseuds/ImhereImQuire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daniel runs away. Again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Runaway

He was racing willpower against desire as much as he was racing against Armand, and he wasn’t sure how much longer he could keep it up. Armand’s reach was impossible to guess, and the constant vigilance, constant need to be aware of his surroundings was taking its toll. He never really knew how Armand managed to find him, whether it was telepathy, paid investigators, or a mixture of the two, and as such he could never relax.

Was the man who seemed to show up in the same bars in Berlin over the past week really a matter of coincidence? Unable to be sure Daniel had doubled back on himself, back to London, Glasgow, before finally settling a while in Amsterdam.

Amsterdam left him frustrated, the picturesque and beautiful scenery made a mockery of his increasingly sordid appetites, while the red light district, with its glassy eyed hookers and flesh films only heightened his sense of loneliness, his general distaste for humanity. The bars and the brothels and the sticky floored movie theatres promised to fulfil every imaginable fantasy, deliver every imaginable high, but all left him cold, empty.

He smoked the kind of dope which made his college brownies seem as timid as his mom’s and though it helped him to sleep on nights where he might otherwise have picked up the phone it did not bring him peace. His dreams were disjointed, but the snatches he remembered stayed with him long after sleep, tormenting his waking hours; Louis offering him a cup of dark wine which turned to dust against his lips, Armand singing a sad song in a language he didn’t understand, and a garden surrounded by white rose bushes which had no way out, no matter how hard he searched.

He was tired, so tired and and there was only one place he could rest. It was four am in Amsterdam, what time was it in Miami? Twilight,at least. He picked up the phone. “Armand?”

“What is it that you want from me, Daniel?”  Of course, he had to say it. Armand’s pride would allow for nothing less, and his own was a thing he could, for the moment at least live without.

“Take me back. Please, Armand, take me back.”

“Oh Daniel…you really are lost without me, aren’t you?” There was genuine delight underneath the amusement, if one knew how to look, and Daniel could allow himself to believe that it ran both ways.


End file.
